Since the pioneering work of Vivian Sobchack, Laura U. Marks and Jennifer M. Barker, film studies has increasingly embraced multisensory spectatorship. Such approaches privilege a carnal vision and knowledge of the world.
Vital Resonances
furthers this work and attunes to what is a foundational, yet overlooked, principle of film studies’ bodily turn: resonance. In keeping with the soft touch that characterises some of this turn’s critical literature – the feel of velvet, the (frustrated) tactility of a sari, the skin of a lover’s body – resonance has been brushed over. Through the work of three leading figures in European cinema, Agnès Varda, Michael Haneke and Jean-Luc Nancy, this book establishes resonance as a critical and conceptual paradigm for film analysis, transforming it from a footnote to the bodily turn and finally placing it at the forefront of our fleshy encounter with film.